SFR Talk: All The Angles

With Jose Amormino

Jose Amormino, aka Geometry Man (haveinnerpeace@earthlink.net), believes the universe is shaped like a donut and that math will be the Rosetta Stone for communicating with aliens. In classrooms, libraries and even at birthday parties, Amormino dons a cape and sparkle-sequined hat to teach kids about the absorbing and revelatory world of spirals and dodecahedrons and how geometry is an inherent force in all of nature.

SFR: So how did you become the Geometry Man?JA: When I was in junior high that was my favorite subject. Intuitively, I just liked geometry better than anything else, but it wasn’t that interesting, actually. It was just ‘A’ squared plus ‘B’ squared, those things. Later on in life I was interested in pyramids, stuff like that. Then about 15 years ago, a friend gave me a book about ‘sacred geometry,’ which I had never heard of before and I was very impressed by it. After that, a lady friend gave me a set of videotapes by a man named Drunvalo Melchizedek about all the different levels of geometry: the earthly level of geometry right up to the more esoteric spiritual level. Then, let’s see, the Geometry Man was born probably about four years ago. Actually my original name was the Geometry Wizard but I changed it to the Geometry Man. The ‘wizard,’ I had thought, might possibly offend some people on the school board—you know, magical, wizard types of things in schools.

Is there a belief or philosophy beneath your style of teaching?My feelings about doing this program for children is that I think the old way of looking at the world and the way we look at science really needs to change, and I think it needs to start with our children. I think they have to really appreciate more of the physical structure of the universe, specifically our earth, our planet and nature. So, what I do is I bring in elements of nature—pine cones, seashells, crystals, starfish—and my purpose is to show children the beauty of nature, the harmony and the symmetry so that as they grow up they will appreciate it more and not use the laws of nature destructively. Form is the language of nature. If we ever encountered aliens, we could communicate with geometry. The ratio between the circumference of a circle and its diameter is always pi and any intelligent being that inhabits this physical universe would understand that idea. In order to learn the language of nature, you have to learn the alphabet, and the alphabet of nature is geometry.

Isn’t that counterintuitive? Geometry is all angles and straight lines, but isn’t nature much more chaotic?Nature seems very chaotic, but if you focus in on nature, like on an atom or a molecule, you’ll find out that it mimics the solar system and the galaxy. Our galaxy spins—it’s called a spiral galaxy—and so do atoms and molecules. Our DNA is a spiral and it’s a phi ratio spiral, which is a spiral in the ‘golden ratio’ that is everywhere in nature. We do live in a chaotic world and I want our young people to realize that the world is not as chaotic as they think, that if they focus and observe the world around them they will find order and harmony throughout the cosmos. It’s important, I think, for us to mimic that.

Is geometry a better tool for illustrating that harmony and order than, say, physics or chemistry?Well, it all goes together. Geometry is an integral part of other sciences that has often been overlooked. Algebra, physics and chemistry all go into it. In a way, there’s really not a discrepancy between any of the sciences and the amazing thing about geometry is that it’s really ubiquitous—it really is everywhere. Our entire bodies, for example, show different cases of the phi ratio: the dimensions of our hands, faces and limbs. Silicon, which is used to make solar panels, is tetrahedronal. The tetrahedron is the simplest of the five Platonic solids.

You’ve mentioned the Platonic solids before; what’s that about?Well, the Platonic solids are like the building blocks of nature. There are only five, three-dimensional shapes you can come up with that have all their sides, faces and angles exactly equal. There’s the tetrahedron, the cube, the octahedron, which has eight sides, the dodecahedron, which is 12, and the icosahedron, which has 20 sides. I teach this to the kids so that they get a real basis for what the world is all about. There may be one or two kids in the group that remember that and will go somewhere with it. They’ll look back and they’ll always remember the Geometry Man because that’s really what the whole thing with the costume is all about: to help them remember.

What’s the age range for your presentation?The material is universally legitimate. When my nephew’s little boy was about 3, I made him a dodecahedron and gave it to him and he loved it. Whenever I went over there I would ask him, ‘Where’s your dodecahedron?’ and he would run to go and get it. He knew what it was and he could even say it! Now he’s about 6 and I gave him a tetrahedron and he knows that too. I have also done at least four workshops on what I call sacred geometry with adults, and we get more in-depth with it. Part of it is geometry of creation. Another aspect of the workshop is the geometry of nature, and another aspect is the geometry of human conceptualization. What geometry can do is show you that with all the apparent chaos that we think we see around us in the world, when we start to understand the basic ideas that put it all together, it can bring us back to unity. Really it all comes from one source, and that’s when I get into more spiritual aspects of geometry, that there is just one mind and it’s a divine mind and it’s a spiritual mind and all of creation came from that.